


darling, you're my lover

by cherryhwa



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Established Relationship, M/M, May be slightly OOC, Tumblr Prompt, books are amazing and if u think otherwise bye, first i love you's :'), i suck at math don't take any of this seriously, libraries SLAP, pure fluff, san is a math genius, the author hates school, they're stressed but together, this is just students! minsang being soft, this is like romantic academia, this is so gross and sappy and cute yuuuuuuck, what if we were in love and read books together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28890936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryhwa/pseuds/cherryhwa
Summary: according to math genius choi san, yeosang spends approximately half of his waking hours in the campus library.unfortunately for san's calculations, there's a variable in this equation, and his name is song mingi.oryeosang and mingi being light academia-core lovers in a campus library
Relationships: Kang Yeosang/Song Mingi
Comments: 7
Kudos: 69





	darling, you're my lover

**Author's Note:**

> first fic of 2021 ! wooooo !!!
> 
> this is another writer's block reboot based off a tumblr prompt (https://www.instagram.com/p/CJ7qpI4ADkh/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link) 
> 
> it's basically soft kisses in a library :( i want that so bad, so have me projecting onto my fav rarepair, minsang ! this isn't my best work , i apologize but i promise i'll be back to writing longer form fics soon :)
> 
> enjoy ~
> 
> \- title from taylor swift's 'lover'

according to math genius choi san, yeosang spends approximately half of his waking hours in the campus library.

ten months ago at the beginning of the spring term of his second year, san had proudly presented an entire excel spreadsheet to yeosang in their shared apartment.

_ “what the fuck is this?” _

_ “i calculated how long you spend in the library every week. you go there a lot, ‘sang.” _

_ “and why did you do this?” _

_ “glad you asked! procrastination.” _ san had grinned. he then guided yeosang to their sofa and sat him down, turning on their tv to display a large powerpoint titled ‘my housemate is a fucking nerd’.  _ “now sit down and listen to me.” _

yeosang probably would have appreciated it more if it hadn’t been eight in the fucking morning and he had a mandatory attendance class in thirty minutes. he had to cut san off at slide 22 out of 60.

this is all to say, yeah. yeosang spends a lot of fucking time in the library.

when he’s not in classes or suffering through art history homework with his friends, he holes up in some random section, pulls out a few books, and reads. he’ll read anything, even though he prefers stories, but he’ll resort to textbooks if he feels like it.

it’s therapeutic, and even though his best friend wooyoung and san call him a nerd, he doesn’t mind. the library is a quiet space, wherein he can just read with soft music playing through his earbuds, and not have to worry about anything else.

it was a comfortable routine.

keyword: was.

san’s calculations were disputed eight months ago, in the form of a redhead chemistry major named song mingi.

\------

the funniest part is that yeosang met mingi in the library.

it had been a rainy day in april, and midterms were just around the corner. and as a art history major on the verge of a severe mental breakdown with many projects due, yeosang had been  _ stressed _ .

actually, he’s always stressed. he’s theorized once or twice that his resting state is actually just frenzied stress.

he had been studying with wooyoung on the first floor of the library. when the words in his overpriced textbook started blurring together, he slammed it closed, making wooyoung and some students around them jump.

_ “yeosang, what the fuck?” _ wooyoung had hissed.  _ “you almost gave me a heart attack man, i can’t die yet.” _

_ “i’m bored.” _ is all yeosang had said.  _ “watch my stuff.” _

_ “you have an exam in twenty-four hours dude.” _

_ “and you have a dance criticism in two hours.” _

_ “it’s called a progress check!”  _ wooyoung had yelled after him, causing students around him to hush him.

going up the stairs, past multitudes of harrowed, stressed students typing frantically on laptops or flicking through textbooks, yeosang kept walking.

and it was by absolute chance that he found himself in the chemistry section.

now yeosang doesn’t like math or science. he’s not bad at it, but he‘s not down to voluntarily do an entire page of problems for fun, like san. there’s a reason why he’s an art major, and it’s because he prefers paint and oils to numbers and formulas.

but he was here. so might as well sit and read, maybe he could take general chemistry next term if it was interesting enough. his friends would laugh at him for sure.

as he was reaching for a book, he had heard a sniffle.

looking around the corner, he had seen a boy with faded red hair, curled up with books and papers strewn around him. it seemed like he was crying.

yeosang was no stranger to the stress of midterms, so he approached the stranger.

_ “are you okay?” _

the boy’s head snapped up, and for a second, yeosang was taken aback. yeah sure this boy had been crying, but he was handsome. his red hair was wavy, he had plush pretty pink lips, and his brown eyes were narrowed in suspicion.

_ “who are you?” _

_ “um. yeosang. you?” _

_ “i don’t know you?” _

_ “i’m just here for, uh, fun, but i saw you crying so i thought-” _

_ “you read chem textbooks for fun?” _ the boy eyed him suspiciously.

_ “no!” _ yeosang had shaken his head.  _ “no, i just- look i don’t really want to explain. i was just asking if you were okay.” _

the boy had sighed, throwing his head back. it hit the bookcase with a dull thud.

_ “i’m really not.” _ he said by way of explanation.  _ “fucking midterms.” _

_ “fucking midterms.” _ yeosang had agreed. since he’s an art major, people often assume midterms and finals are a breeze. ‘it’s just art’, they say. he kind of wishes they could see him at three AM on coffee trying to finish a paper on art history or whatever weird technique the professor loves. _ “well, i feel you, but i gotta go. homework and all that.” _

when yeosang turned around, he had tripped over a book. picking it up, he found it was a book that he had read before. a long time ago, during one of the first trips he made to the library out of stress.

_ “hey.” _ he had looked down at the boy.  _ “you like this book?” _

the boy looked apprehensive. _ “yeah?” _

yeosang smiled and moved to sit down in front of the boy.

_ “me too.” _

finally, the boy smiled, and yeosang had felt his heart flutter unnaturally at the gesture.

_ “i’m mingi.”  _

yeosang doesn’t remember how long he sat there, debating the main plotpoints of the book with mingi and laughing about the characters. all he remembers is when the sunlight finally broke through the gray clouds, and the light landed on mingi’s skin and his hair just right, and yeosang knew he was fucked.

it was a rainy day in april, in the dim lighting of the campus library, that yeosang fell in love.

(when he went back to the first floor, wooyoung was gone and so was his backpack. there was just a text on his phone reading:  _ you could at least tell me you were gonna go hook up instead. _ )

\------

according to math genius choi san, yeosang is awake for approximately nineteen hours a day. the math major had also smugly announced that he had accounted for all possible variables, like all-nighters or well-deserved sleeping in on weekends.

just this morning, he had announced that he accounted for one more variable. which was yeosang’s new internship at an art museum downtown.

“i’m a fucking genius.” is how he explained it.

“sure you are.” yeosang had said as he filled his mug with coffee. “get back to me when you solve the mystery of existence.”

of course, he then got both wooyoung and san on his ass for being mean to san. just another morning, really.

however, this was all exacerbated by how the rest of his day went. as it was december, snow wasn’t out of the ordinary, and yeosang doesn’t hate snow persay, but trudging through it to each of his classes wasn’t ideal.

it all comes to a head when he trips and falls in front of the art building. now normally, this wouldn’t faze him, but everything was already stressful and this was  _ not _ helping.

“yeosang!” he hears a voice call as he gingerly stands up, brushing off powdery snow from his coat. “you okay?”

when he looks up, it’s park seonghwa, looking worried.

he vaguely knows seonghwa from a few art classes. the fourth year was also an art major, but yeosang knows him best from wooyoung, who’s friends with seonghwa’s fashion major boyfriend, hongjoong. but still, they’re not best friends.

“ah, hey.” he mumbles. “i’m fine.” he reassures the older, who doesn’t look convinced.

“you sure? you fell pretty hard.”

“yeah.” yeosang smiles, though it’s forced. seonghwa must notice, but if he does, he doesn’t comment. “have fell harder skateboarding, it’s cool.”

“okay.” seonghwa smiles back. “just making sure. also wooyoung said you were pretty stressed lately, we could go out all together sometime?”

“mhm.” yeosang likes seonghwa, he really does, but he wants nothing more to either be sitting in the library with a thick book or cuddled up in mingi’s arms. unfortunately, he can only get one, and it’s not the latter. “see you later.”

when he walks into the library, and the warmth of the building welcomes him from the biting cold, he feels a little sad.

he wishes mingi was here to hold him as they read their respective books, one earbud in each of their ears. he’d usually be drowning in one of the taller’s sweatshirts, curled up in the other’s lap falling asleep as mingi hums to whatever song plays on shuffle.

but mingi’s in class, and yeosang’s just procrastinating on his projects. he should go home and work on them, but yeosang has never been the best at making good decisions for his GPA.

he walks up the stairs, turning and twisting through familiar corridors until he finds his favorite spot.

the chemistry section.

normally, it was mingi reading through his class materials while yeosang picked up a book from the classics or the psychology or art section (occasionally mingi would say fuck his classes and join him). but he’s too lazy to reroute to those sections, so he picks a random blue bound book and sits on the floor, plugging his headphones into his phone and leaning against his backpack as a pillow.

an hour later, yeosang’s so lost in reading about molecules and chemical reactions that he doesn’t see the person crouching in front of him.

a finger curls under his chin, forcing him to look up into the sweet brown eyes of his boyfriend.

mingi pulls the earbud out of his left ear. it lands on the floor, and the section they’re in is quiet enough that the music coming out can be audibly heard in the silence. yeosang’s face burns red as mingi chuckles.

“really, yeo? taylor swift?”

“you’re being judgmental and i don’t like it.” yeosang huffs. he reaches for the pause button on his headphones, but a hand swats him away. the music continues to play, soft and echoing in the empty section.

“you like me though.” mingi tilts his head, and he looks so much like a puppy that yeosang has to relent. one of mingi’s hands rests on yeosang’s face, cupping his cheek. closing his eyes, yeosang smiles, leaning into the touch and lifting a hand to entwine it with the other’s.

“it’s unfortunate really.” he opens his eyes to see the redhead pouting, mouth twisted up. “i’m kidding, min.” he pushes the book off of his lap, and in turn, pushing mingi against the bookcase on the other side of the aisle.

he crawls onto mingi’s lap, not letting the other adjust before slotting their mouths together.

“y-yeo.” mingi pulls away. “we’re in public.”

“okay, and?” yeosang is the one to pull a pout this time, because after many, many experiments, he knows that mingi gets weak when he sticks his lips out like  _ this _ and widens his eyes just a little bit.

so of course, it’s no surprise when it works.

mingi just sighs, and wraps his arms around yeosang’s waist, pulling him back in. throwing his arms around mingi’s neck, yeosang smiles as their lips meet again.

back when yeosang was single and hunkering down in library sections by himself, he hated it when he found couples making out in the aisles, desecrating the areas he used to read.

hypocrisy at its finest, he supposes.

because mingi’s lips are a lot more interesting than any pulitzer prize-winning book, than any patterns of ink on paper. mingi’s kisses are more cathartic than the end of any shakespeare play, more heart-racing than any dollar store romance novel. and yeosang would probably give up books if it meant having mingi.

emphasis on probably. it’s still up in the air.

“can’t believe you came without me.” mingi says against his lips in mock-annoyance. “i thought defiling library bookshelves was our thing.”

“was stressed.” yeosang explains, pulling away to tuck his head into mingi’s blue-scarved neck. from this angle, he can see the snow steadily falling outside, blanketing the world in white. “sorry, i should’ve texted.”

“s’alright.” mingi kisses the top of his blond hair. “if you’re really interested in organic chemistry, i can bring you the textbook that gave me three consecutive breakdowns last term.” he motions to the book abandoned to their side.

“yes, please bring it. i’ll burn it.” yeosang tilts his head back to look up at his boyfriend, whose cheeks and nose are stained red from the cold and he’s giving yeosang the fondest smile that makes his heart slam against his ribcage.

he leans in, kissing mingi again, the other’s lips warm despite the bitter cold outside. mingi kisses back easily, hands coming up to cup yeosang’s face like a precious treasure.

“i love you.” he murmurs, and yeosang quickly pulls away, staring at mingi.

“what?”

mingi smiles, that precious gummy smile that he fell in love with. “i love you, yeosang.”

it’s the first time.

and yet, it seems so fitting, to be in the same place that they met, declaring their love for the first time. maybe that’s what encourages yeosang to connect their lips again, a soft kiss like snowflakes falling on eyelashes.

“loser.” he says fondly, cutting off mingi’s protesting whine with another kiss. “love you too.”

“say it like you mean it.” mingi pouts.

“do you want a romantic candlelit dinner in the quad?” 

“why the quad?”

“mingi, baby, my honey, my lover, i’m broke.”

mingi’s eyes light up. “lover?”

“shut up.”

“say itt.” mingi pokes his cheeks. “say it.”

yeosang exhales. 

“i love you.”

mingi grins, big and wide, the one yeosang loves and adores.

“wanna go get ice cream?”

it’s snowing. it’s fucking freezing, below zero degrees celsius, and yet yeosang finds himself tucked in the corner of an ice cream parlor by the university, smearing chocolate ice cream on mingi’s nose and laughing as his lover pouts.

as stated before, reading is therapeutic for yeosang. it’s his preferred time waster, his hobby.

but there’s something more interesting than the printed words of leather bound books, and it’s in the form of a redheaded boy that puts the poetry in classic literature to shame.

so unfortunately for math genius choi san, the poor math major hasn’t quite accounted for  _ all _ possible variables.

_ ladies and gentlemen, would you please stand? _

_ with every guitar string scar on my hand, _

_ i take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover. _

**Author's Note:**

> headcanon that mingi and yeosang do that date idea where you buy each other a book you'd think the other would like and then read it and give each other reviews :(((( i am so lonely
> 
> thank you for reading ~~
> 
> i don't use twitter all that much, but if you want to see me occasionally cry in yeosang's mentions, follow me ~ @ treasureyeo


End file.
